4/27/2023 0 Comments Friar tuck![]() In the middle of the set he sang all his hits, back to back (including “Kiss”), with admirable gusto. He slayed other contemporary tunes: Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis,” and EMF’s “Unbelievable.” He chatted with the audience, said he was “so happy” to be at the Friar Tuck. Although no undergarments of any kind were thrown onstage, it would not have surprised me if there had been. He could rock, but he possessed a finesse few rockers can claim, a calm mastery. At 52, he not only hit every note (and his songs are not easy to sing, trust me), he filled the room with sound, commanded it, wove a spell with those pipes, transported all fully into the moment. Turns out, Tom Jones is one of those artists whose instrument has never been fully captured by recording technology, analog, digital, whatever. Until we rounded a corner to a line of cars heading to the Buckingham Palace Theatre at the Friar Tuck Resort & Convention Center. We drove through real estate gone to seed, a sadly common post-NAFTA formerly bustling blue-collar town, barely holding on. ![]() Catskill was about an hour’s drive.Īt the city limits, a faded sign proclaimed Catskill as Mike Tyson’s early Eighties home, where he’d trained with, and been adopted by local legend Cus D’Amato. The notion of a “Tom Jones Road Trip” was tantalizing. In those weekender days, we often hit the two-lane blacktop for adventure (or misadventure). We loved his irresistible single “Kiss,” and the fun video. We’d bought TJ’s Sixties and Seventies LPs at yard sales, and genuinely enjoyed them. We were weekenders then, taking refuge from Manhattan in a Chichester cabin. Mark’s influence on his father’s subsequent resurgence among a new demographic cannot be overstated. He’d instructed his old man to ditch the tight trousers for well-cut suits, and to record something cool. The Welsh Soul Brother was still riding his 1988 worldwide hit, a fabulous re-invention of Prince’s “Kiss,” masterminded by famed Eighties producer Trevor Horn and Jones’ son, Mark. Although there’s no citation on Google, my wife and I saw Tom Jones play in Catskill at the Buckingham Palace Theater at the Friar Tuck Inn in the summer of 1992.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |